Personality part 4.1 Flashcards
(71 cards)
Explain instrumental conditioning
In instrumental conditioning, the behaviour causes the presence (✅) or absence (❌) of a stimulus.
👉 KEY CONCEPT: The organism (animal/human) learns that their behaviour controls the environment.
Give an analogy of instrumental conditioning
🔍 Think of it like this: Imagine you press a button on a vending machine and coffee comes out. Your action (pressing the button) caused the outcome (coffee). If you didn’t press it, nothing happens. This is instrumental — your action is the “instrument” that brings about a result.
Putting a coin in a coffee machine = coffee.
Your behaviour (inserting a coin) produces a stimulus (coffee).
You do it because in the past, doing the same thing gave you coffee.
That’s instrumental behaviour — repeating a behaviour because it led to a desirable result.
What is the contrast to classical conditioning?
In contrast, in classical conditioning, the stimulus comes no matter what — you’re more like a passive observer.
In instrumental conditioning, you do something, and something happens because of that.
animal intelligence”? Thorndike
Thorndike called it animal intelligence, but the cats didn’t show deep understanding — they just learned what action works, not why.
When a cat is placed in a box, it doesn’t “think” about levers and mechanics — it just tries lots of behaviours. Some of those behaviours happen to open the door.
So:
It’s not “aha!” insight.
It’s reinforcement of what worked.
What did Edward Thorndike’s puzzle box experiments show about how animals learn?
🐱 Thorndike’s Experiment:
Studied animal intelligence using puzzle boxes.
Placed hungry cats in boxes with visible food outside.
The task: escape the box to get food.
📦 Example – Box A:
Cat had to pull a ring to open the door.
1st try: Took 160 sec.
Later tries: As fast as 6 sec.
🌀 Different boxes = different required behaviours
(e.g., pulling rings, pressing levers)
🔄 Trial-and-Error Learning:
Initially: Random behaviours (scratching, meowing, pacing).
Accidentally pulled the ring → door opened.
Learned to repeat the successful action, skipping the useless ones.
💡 Analogy:
Like finding a light switch in the dark — try random movements until you find it. Next time? Go straight to it.
🔄 Stimulus–Response–Outcome
Behaviour → Positive outcome → Strengthened behaviour
Let’s break this down:
The cat sees a lever (stimulus).
Pushes the lever (response).
Escapes (outcome).
Because escaping is a good outcome, the brain strengthens the connection between the stimulus and response.
Important: The cat doesn’t understand how the lever works. It just knows “When I see that thing and do this action, I get out.”
This is key to instrumental learning — you’re not reasoning through it like a human engineer; you’re learning through cause and effect.
🔁 What is the Law of Effect?
Thorndike observed from the puzzle box experiments that:
If a behaviour (R) happens in the presence of a stimulus (S), and is followed by a positive outcome,
➜ then the S–R association gets stronger.
💡 Example:
S (Stimulus) = the lever
R (Response) = pressing the lever
Outcome = escape from the box
Next time the cat sees the lever (S) → it’s more likely to press it (R) because it remembers it led to escape.
📌 Key concept: The consequence (what happens after the action) affects how strong the connection is between the stimulus (S) and the response (R).
👎 What if the outcome is negative in instrumental conditioning?
If the response (R) doesn’t lead to a positive result, the S–R association becomes weaker.
💡 Example:
A cat tries pulling a door handle (R), but nothing happens (no escape).
Next time it sees the handle (S), it’s less likely to try the same response.
What is said about the consequnce?
The consequence doesn’t form the association — it modifies its strength.
You still have an S–R link (e.g., see lever → push), but reinforcement makes it stronger, and no reward makes it weaker.
⚡ Real-life analogy:
Imagine trying a key in a door:
🔑 If it opens the door (positive outcome) ➜ you’ll remember that key.
🔐 If it doesn’t ➜ you stop trying that one.
🧭 What is a Discrete-Trial Procedure?
A setup where animals have only one chance (trial) at a time to perform a specific instrumental response, and then the trial ends.
The Maze Setup in Discrete-Trial Procedure?
The rat starts in a start box.
It runs down a runway to a goal box with a reinforcer (like food or water).
When the rat gets to the end ➜ trial is over.
What are the📏 Measurable Behaviours in the maze setup?
- Running Speed 🏃♂️
How fast the animal gets from start to goal.
📈 Increases if the rat is motivated (learns where reward is).
- Response Latency ⏱
Time it takes for the rat to start moving from the box.
📉 Gets shorter if it learns the task and is motivated.
- T-Maze (Slide 20)
A T-shaped maze: Rat starts at the base, then chooses left or right.
Allows study of choice, memory, and directional learning.
👶 Baby Rat Experiment
Setup:
Mother placed in right goal box, other female in the left.
Baby rat is placed in the start box.
When it finds its mother, the trial ends.
Result:
After a few trials, the baby always turned right.
It kept turning right even after the mother was removed.
👉 That’s instrumental learning!
What was learned in Baby Rat Experiment?
Stimulus: Junction (the T-intersection)
Instrumental Response:Turning right
Reinforcing Outcome Meeting the mother
______________________
This created an S–R association:
S = “I see a junction”
R = “Turn right”
Outcome = “I meet mum” ➜ so the R gets reinforced
Even when mum is gone, the learned association remains.
Short about Thorndike’s experiments?
In Thorndike’s procedures (puzzle boxes and mazes), the animal only has the
opportunity to show instrumental responses during specific periods of time trials
The animal has limited opportunities to respond, and those opportunities are
scheduled by the experimenter.
The experimenter controls when a trial starts and ends (e.g., when the rat escapes or reaches a goal box).
The animal learns to repeat instrumental behaviours that work within those trials.
What is the free-operant Procedures?
B. F. Skinner’s Big Idea:
In contrast to Thorndike’s discrete-trial procedures (one try, then reset), Skinner designed a system where:
The animal isn’t removed after every trial.
Instead, it can act freely and continuously.
Instead, the animal is free to produce instrumental behaviour many times, whenever it chooses.
✅ Key Concept: “Free-operant” = continuous behavior
Analogy: Imagine playing a game where you can try over and over without resetting after every move. Unlike a board game where each turn ends and resets, this is like a video game where you can keep playing continuously.
✅ Animals are free to produce instrumental behaviour many times.
This makes it more like real life: behavior flows from moment to moment, not in isolated “chunks”.
What is the 📦 The Skinner Box?
(Slide 26)
A small chamber where a rat can press a lever or a pigeon can peck a key.
When the correct action is performed, food is delivered (this food is the reinforcer)
Why does free operant procedures matter?
This procedure is more natural because real-world behaviour is continuous — one action flows into the next. It’s not chopped up into separate units. With this method, we can study how behaviour unfolds without interruption.
It also lets us study how behaviour can be broken down into measurable units called operants.
🎯 Key Point: An operant is just a bit of behaviour (like pressing a lever) that has a consequence (like receiving food). It’s the building block of free-operant conditioning.
🔁 Repeated Behavior and Reinforcement in free-operant Procedures
Let’s say the rat is hungry. Inside the Skinner Box:
🐀 → Push the Lever → 🍽️ Get Food (Reinforcer)
The rat learns this pattern through experience. The more it pushes and gets food, the stronger the behavior becomes.
Magazine Training & Response Shaping
Before the rat can press a lever for food, it must learn:
Food is delivered in a food cup.
Sound of the delivery device (like a click) happens every time.
Over time, the sound becomes associated with food — it elicits salivation even on its own.
Eventually, the sound elicits a sign-tracking response — the rat hears the sound and goes to the food cup to retrieve the pellet.
✅ This is classical conditioning:
Sound (neutral stimulus) + Food (unconditioned stimulus) → Rat salivates
Eventually, sound alone → salivation and approach to food cup
🔧 Response Shaping
Now that the rat understands food delivery, we want it to press the lever. But it won’t do this naturally.
So we use shaping — reinforcing successive approximations toward the final behaviour.
Here’s how it works:
Food is given if the rat rears up anywhere in the chamber.
Then, only if it rears near the lever.
Then, only when it presses the lever.
This is reinforcement of successive approximations — rewarding behaviours that get closer and closer to the target response.
🧠 Analogy: Teaching a child to shoot a basketball:
Reward them for throwing the ball.
Then only when they hit the backboard.
Then only when they score.
📏 Once the final operant response is achieved, we must not reinforce earlier response forms — otherwise, the animal might go back to doing the old, partial behaviours.
Are these “new” behaviors? for the rats in the Response Shaping?
Not entirely. The rat already knows how to move, rear up, sniff, etc.
👉 We’re just combining familiar actions into a new sequence that leads to a new goal (pressing the lever).
Analogy: You already know how to move fingers. Learning piano is about combining those moves into a meaningful pattern — a song.
What is an 🎸 Everyday Example of Response Shaping
Shaping isn’t just for rats — we use it every day.
Learning sports: reward baby steps (ball gets closer to hoop → reward).
Playing guitar: reward messy chords at first, then cleaner transitions.
Social anxiety: reward showing up, then starting convos, then being confident.
Gradually reward behaviors that build up to the final goal. 🌱🌿🌳
Explain key terms (Operant response, Operant, Same operant response)
Let’s break down the terms now that you’ve seen them in action:
Operant response: This is the actual behaviour, like lever pressing or pecking a key.
Operant: A broader term — it means any behaviour modified by its consequences (either reinforced or inhibited).
Same operant response: Even if the behavior looks different, as long as it causes the same effect on the environment, it counts as the same operant response. 🧠 Analogy: Whether you use your left hand, right hand, or even your nose to tap a light switch — if the light turns off, it’s the same operant response. The effect, not the method, is what matters
